Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

[7]
Also the practice of Antimachus is useful, that of
describing a thing by the qualities it does not possess; thus, in speaking of
the hill Teumessus,1 he says, “
There is a little windswept hill;

” for in this way amplification may be carried on ad
infinitum. This method may be applied to things good and bad, in
whichever way it may be useful. Poets also make use of this in inventing words,
as a melody “without strings” or “without the
lyre”; for they employ epithets from negations, a course which is
approved in proportional metaphors, as for instance, to say that the sound of
the trumpet is a melody without the lyre.

1 In Boeotia. The quotation is from the Thebaid of Antimachus of Claros （c. 450
B.C.）. The Alexandrians placed him next to Homer among the epic
poets. In his eulogy of the little hill, he went on to attribute to it all
the good qualities it did not possess, a process which could
obviously be carried on ad infinitum.

An XML version of this text is available for download,
with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted
changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.